John Foster Dulles

John Foster Dulles (25 February 1888-24 May 1959) was the US Secretary of State from 26 January 1953 to 22 April 1959, succeeding Dean Acheson and preceding Christian Herter; he previously served as a member of the US Senate (R) from New York from 7 July to 8 November 1949, succeeding Robert F. Wagner and preceding Herbert H. Lehman. Dulles was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world.

Biography
John Foster Dulles was born in Washington DC in 1888, and he was educated at Princeton and the Sorbonne before obtaining an LL B degree at George Washington University. He became a successful New York lawyer and was invited to attend the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He attended numerous international conferences between the wars and by 1944 had become the leading Republican Party spokesperson on foreign affairs. By and large, he supported Presideny Harry S. Truman's bipartisan approach to foreign policy after World War II. Thus, he was called on to draft the Treaty of San Francisco with Japan in 1951. As Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower he became a keen protagonist of the Cold War. He built up NATO and was largely responsible for SEATO, and he advanced beyond the Truman Doctrine of containment by urging that the USA prepare a massive nuclear arms buildup as a deterrent to Soviet aggression, which could be used to support the policy of brinkmanship. He helped formulate the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, though his more aggressive anti-Soviet impulses were checked by President Eisenhower. He prepared the ground for the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and for the Vietnam War by urging active US intervention in Cuba and Vietnam respectively. He died of colon cancer in 1959.